EVOLUTION IN EUROPE

EVOLUTION IN EUROPE; Soviet Party: Hazy Future

By BILL KELLER, Special to The New York Times

Published: July 13, 1990

MOSCOW, July 12—
It took 10 days for Mikhail S. Gorbachev to secure his triumph over the Communist Party, and less than a minute tonight to cast doubt on the value of his victory.

As Mr. Gorbachev pushed the 28th congress of his party toward its conclusion, he could revel in the knowledge that he had neutralized the orthodox Marxists as a power within the party, liberated himself from the pressures of the party's governing bureaucracy and headed off a fatal split in the ranks.

But with the delegates hurrying toward adjournment on Friday, Boris N. Yeltsin, the country's most popular Communist leader, suddenly chilled the congress with the terse announcement that he was leaving the party so that it would not interfere with his work as President of the Russian republic.

Implicit in his statement was an intimation that Mr. Gorbachev had mastered a party without much of a future.

If Stalin's famous ''Short Course in the History of the Communist Party'' were updated to cover the 28th congress, the chapter heading might read something like this: ''Liquidation of the Ligachevite Gang of Wreckers, Degeneration of the Left Faction, Humane Democratic Socialism as the Party's Course.''

Yegor K. Ligachev, the genial, doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist who looms in the liberals' demonology, was given broad license to attack the creeping capitalism and unilateral surrender he sees in Mr. Gorbachev's direction of the country.

On Wednesday he framed a clear choice for the congress by offering himself for the powerful post of deputy party leader, against Mr. Gorbachev's own candidate, a centrist.

This morning Mr. Gorbachev sat with a smug look at the conclusion of this little morality play, as the overnight vote-counters announced his archrival's repudiation: 776 votes for Mr. Ligachev, 3,642 against.

Even the staid official Tass press agency crowed with delight, declaring that with Mr. Ligachev's defeat it now seemed probable the Soviet Communist Party ''will escape the fate of its East European 'junior sisters' and manage to prevent a split and preserve its influence among the grassroots.''

''Gorbachev's fine dream, which far from everybody believed in before the congress, appears to be slowly coming true,'' the press agency exulted.

Indeed, Mr. Gorbachev's humiliation of the old guard was just one of the successes he can claim from this congress.

Freed From Most Nagging

Another is that, thanks to this congress's structural reorganization of the party and a clean sweep of its leadership, Mr. Gorbachev is now freer than he has ever been of the party's nagging oversight.

Until this congress, Mr. Gorbachev's supporters could claim that his progressive urges as President were held back by his obligations as party leader.

His presidential policies were subject to the tolerance of the party's governing Central Committee and its elite Politburo, where the entrenched party functionaries and Ligachevite ideologues held disproportionate power.

Moreover, most of the key figures in Mr. Gorbachev's Government were also members of the party's ruling circle, answerable to both masters.

A New Politburo

The new party plan removes most top Government leaders from the Central Committee and Politburo. Their line of authority now runs straight to the President and Parliament.

To further insulate himself from party pressure, Mr. Gorbachev has replaced the old Politburo with a new one dominated by the party heads of the 15 republics - men who are generally more independent of the central party, somewhat more in tune with the public, and more loyal to Mr. Gorbachev.

The party leader's third achievement was to make it through the congress without renouncing any of his policies, despite relentless sniping from disaffected delegates.

Any sign that he was reneging on his commitment to democratic government, pluralism of opinion, or a market-oriented economy would have hastened the departure of intellectuals and young people who already find little of appeal in the party.

Instead, in a fighting speech on Tuesday, Mr. Gorbachev held out an olive branch to political independents and insisted that local party functionaries -nearly half the delegates were such ''apparatchiks'' - break their habit of obstructing the new, elected local government councils.

Mr. Gorbachev's supporters were confident this afternoon that his reaffirmed commitment to what he calls ''humane, democratic socialism,'' together with the routing of Mr. Ligachev, would be enough to keep a semblance of unity in the party.

Mr. Yeltsin's announcement, however, was a reminder of the unpleasant realities that the Communists have managed to hold at bay during their Kremlin convention.

One reality is that the party is not much loved, and what popularity it retains will suffer with the departure of Mr. Yeltsin.

Protesters Outside Kremlin

An anti-Communist mood was evident in the one-day protest strike by coal miners on Wednesday, and can be readily found in any barren grocery store.

Outside the Kremlin on Wednesday night, some protesters demonstrating in solidarity with the coal miners spat on departing delegates from the party congress.

''If we had a multiparty system, which party would you vote for?'' the All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion asked a nationwide sample in May. The Communist Party got 19 percent - the highest of any party, but hardly a stellar showing considering that it is the only firmly established party.

Mr. Yeltsin's approval rating in the same poll was 84 percent.

Members themselves are deserting the party, and the exodus is likely to hasten as membership becomes a liability, and as one or more of the budding alternative parties acquires a few political stars.

'Some Misguided People'

''There is no harm if some misguided people leave the party,'' Arkady A. Maslennikov, Mr. Gorbachev's presidential spokesman, said today. ''They always say the party is a bit too big.''

But those who are leaving are the most electable, the young, and the workers in whose name the party has claimed to govern.

Even without losing members, the party is losing power to the elected government bodies that Mr. Gorbachev set in motion.

Twice during the first 10 days of the congress, the party had its nose tweaked by assertive Government bodies - once, when Mr. Yeltsin left the congress where he was a delegate and ostentatiously convened his Russian Parliament, and again, when the Parliament in the nation's second largest republic, the Ukraine, ordered its congress delegates to come home and work on more serious business.

It is true that Communists still dominate local governments in most cities and republics, and still hold a majority in the federal Parliament.

Some of these are Communists of deep conviction, but many more are Communists because the party was the path to power. In a rigidly stratified society, the party was the only way someone from a blue collar or farm family would move upward to positions of political influence. They have learned to like it.

Mr. Yeltsin's announcement is for these people an eerie premonition of a future in which Communists may have to chose between power and the party.

Photo: President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who has steered the Communist Party Congress to political triumphs for his policies, spoke with Anatoly Lukyanov, a Politburo member, at the session yesterday in Moscow. (Reuters) (pg. A6)